Arts Education The Art of Creative Teaching Professional Development Workshop
The Art of Creative Teaching
A free professional development workshop for teachers
The Arts Council's Art of Creative Teaching Workshop took place Monday, February 20, 2012 at Lockheed Martin. This professional development workshop, made possible by grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Jane K Lowe Foundation, the Junior League of Huntsville, and the National Endowment for the Arts, provided teachers grades K-12 in Madison County with an opportunity to learn how the arts can play an important role in their classrooms everyday. Teachers received hands on training and valuable resources that will help them feel confident using the arts as a teaching tool in their classroom. The arts not only help teachers engage students in a new and exciting way, but also provide educators with opportunities to reach students with a variety of learning styles.
The keynote speaker for the event was Chris Czajka who joined us from New York City; Mr. Czajka holds an MFA in Theatre for Youth and currently serves as the Director of WNET New York’s LAB@Thirteen, which creates, supervises and executes community and educational outreach initiatives for Thirteen/WNETs broadcast and on-line publications. Mr. Czajka will share his expertise in the use of technology as a teaching tool and provide insight on accredited resources that are available for educators. Following the keynote address teachers will have the opportunity to attend 3 break-out session workshops led by regionally and nationally recognized arts education professionals. (See workshop descriptions and presenters bios below). Teachers who attend the workshop will also be invited to submit a lesson plan in May of 2012 that implements what they have learned for a chance to be awarded one of three $250 classroom grants to be used during the 2012-2013 school year.
Workshops & Presenters Included
Investigating the Artistic Process with Chris Czajka
Chris Czajka
This school year, hundreds of students across Alabama will have their first experiences with Shakespeare, reading Romeo and Juliet. But it’s pretty likely that if your students see two different stage productions or movie adaptations of the play, they will differ significantly. Why?
In this workshop, participants investigated how a team of artists comes together to create a unified artistic vision, and have a chance to become designers for a hypothetical new production!
Christopher W. Czajka is the Senior Director of Educational and Community Outreach at WNET, the flagship PBS station in New York City. His department creates, supervises, and executes national initiatives associated with WNET’s broadcast productions. From 2000 through 2004, Chris served as the Associate Director of WNET’s National Teacher Training Institute (NTTI), a professional development initiative for educators involving the local efforts of over 50 PBS stations nationwide.Throughout the project’s history, NTTI provided direct training on integrating technology into the curriculum to over 150,000 educators. In addition to his outreach work, Chris served as a historical consultant for the “hands-on history” series Frontier House (one of the highest-rated PBS productions in history), and as the educational consultant for Broadway: The American Musical, Colonial House, and Texas Ranch House. His work on the Web-based educational interactives for Colonial House was recognized by Entertainment Weekly's "Must List," a first-ever achievement for a PBS production. Currently, he is assisting in game development and guiding national outreach associated with WNET’s on-line American history video game, Mission US. In 2012, he is looking forward to a new broadcast and web-based project that will bring theatre education resources to students across the country, based on the upcoming Broadway revival of Annie. Prior to joining WNET, he served as the Associate Director of Education at The New 42nd Street, Inc., the non-profit company charged with the restoration of eight historic theaters adjacent to Times Square. Outside the world of public television, Chris recently served as the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historical Consultant for the First National Tour of Little House on the Prairie, The Musical, directed by Francesca Zambello and starring Melissa Gilbert, and has created arts-in-education materials and workshops for organizations as diverse as NYU’s Educational Theatre Program, the Metropolitan Opera, and Nashville Children's Theatre. Chris has taught at the Idyllwild School for Music and the Arts in Southern California and Arizona State University. He holds a B.S. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, and an M.F.A. in Theater for Young Audiences from Arizona State University.
Deborah Ferguson
Literacy for Little People: Literacy Connections and Making Meaning by Deborah Adero Ferguson ©2010
Rhythm is a Universal Language: Using Rhythm to Teach Language Arts with John Scalici 
John Scalici
Rhythm is a universal language. Everyone has it, everyone speaks it. We can see it, feel it, and hear it.We can even read and write about it! In this workshop, master teaching artist and internationally acclaimed drumming facilitator, John Scalici will teach and empower you to use rhythm as a tool for teaching language arts skills.Using what he calls “expressive and descriptive” drumming, there is no need for any prior musical experience because there are no “wrong” beats. Read more about John Scalici and this workshop...
Sherry Norfolk
Storytelling Classroom with Sherry Norfolk
Storytelling belongs in an on-going and fundamental way in education. It allows teachers to teach Language Arts, Social Studies, Math and Science standards in holistic and meaningful ways. It changes the way teachers manage children and the way everyone speaks to each other; it's democratic; it's fun; it's whole; and it's very, very humane.
Laurie Melnik
Joel Baxley
Character In Context with Joel Baxley and Laurie Melnik
This session explores the big idea of context through character building strategies in drama and viewer response strategies in visual art. Teachers will walk away from this session with practical applications of drama in their classroom through incorporating interpretation strategies rooted in visual art, as well as facilitation strategies that invite multiple ways of exploring an art form with instructional purpose and embedded assessments. Resources will be provided to help teachers apply presented strategies in their own classroom and demonstrate the placement of these strategies in an integrated lesson. Read more about Joel, Laurie and this workshop...
Mary Halverstadt
Moving the Body, Connecting the Mind with Mary Halverstadt
Learn to incorporate movement into every day & lesson specific activities to enhance & promote skills in critical thinking, creative problem solving, self-discipline, & social cooperation by connecting the mind, body & emotional self. From vocabulary to simple math to positive self image this nonverbal art form can change the dynamics of the classroom. Read more about Mary and...
The Art of Creative Teaching Workshop is made possible by grants from the following:
.png)
Special thanks to:
Become a member of the arts council and take advantage of our live Arts Community